HADRON AGE SF (73)
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October 25, 2023
One in a series of posts about the 75 best sf adventures published during the genre’s Hadron Age era (from 2004–2023, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s Hadron Age Sci-Fi 75 list (a work in progress), click here.
Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea (2022).
Summoned to an island off the coast of Vietnam, Dr. Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist and cephalopod intelligence expert, soon realizes that the first alien intelligences we’ll encounter… are already here on Earth. This near-future cyberpunk thriller — which includes eerie undersea encounters with lethal, spectacularly talented creatures; humans taken prisoner by an automated fishing boat; and killer drones under the control of a bad-ass lady named Altantsetseg — is also a philosophical and semiotic novel, one that requires us to consider what we may learn about our own worldview through translation. We’ll also meet Evrim, the world’s only artificially intelligent android, who reminds this reader of David Bowie’s Newton, in The Man Who Fell to Earth; Rustem, a hacker paid to access the android’s brain; and one of the fishing boat’s prisoners. Their discoveries and tribulations are contextualized by a world dramatically altered by climate change and over-fishing… which makes us all the more concerned for the alien-ish octopi. And the island, which becomes both a fortress and a prison, is very atmospheric. Is there too much going on here? Sometimes it feels that way, yes — which is why it took me much longer than usual to finish reading. But in addition to the knotty conundrums and wicked problems already mentioned here, there are so many cool sf ideas: hatchling sea turtles guarded by robotic Automonks from Tibet; AI romantic partners that are all too good at giving you what you think you want, rather than what you actually need — which is the problem with AI; and the scenes where Altantsetseg deploys her drones are very satisfying. In the end, though, it’s the decoding — Dr. Nguyen’s race to understand how and what the octopi are communicating, and to speak with then, that I’ll remember.
Fun facts: Though Ray Nayler, a globe-trotting civil servant who has worked in international educational development, as well as serving in the Peace Corps, and who recently served as the international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has written many sf stories before, this is his first novel. It won the Locus Award for Debut Novel, and was widely praised. Nayler’s novella The Tusks of Extinction will be published in January 2024.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST HADRON AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES.